City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  On the other side of the sloping plaza, between the Mother Church and the ornate façade of the theater, the opposition Basques held the highest ground. In the center, Antonio de Bermeo y de Novarra Tovar, that snob who gave himself such airs because of his noble lineage. Morada did not have a famous bloodline like Tovar’s, but his father, Juan de la Morada, had fought with Pizarro. The son of a Conquistador was as good as any son of a womanish old conde who had stayed behind in Spain.

  The Alcalde de la Morada allowed himself a sad smirk. That Basque Tovar had willingly sent his daughter, Beatriz, to the convent. Put her in that prison on purpose. It was an oddly comforting thought: that his chief rival’s only child was with his and that Tovar also was without the bright eyes and animated conversation of his daughter at his dinner table.

  If the proclamation Morada was about to read delivered the hardships it threatened, his great consolation would be that it would harm his enemies as much as it harmed him. More, since his own wealth was in pure silver ingots and very well hidden. Seven million pesos. A huge fortune. He had sent a train of Indian porters into the country every night for the past month. Everyone suspected they carried silver, but no one knew where they went. Only his most trusted supporters—men he owned body and soul—knew where his fortune lay.

  Felipe Ramirez, the Assayer of the Mint, touched Morada’s arm. “It is time,” he said. Ramirez was short and stout, but no one would be better at one’s side in a fierce fight.

  Morada straightened his cloak and carefully folded back the right side to reveal the golden silk of its lining and the gold-and-silver embroidery of his doublet. The work had been done in Genoa and the garment tailored to his measurements in Lima by the Viceroy’s own tailor.

  “I am ready,” he said. He followed Ramirez to the door. He paused until the crowd in the plaza focused completely on him. Then he took up the proclamation that had arrived from Lima yesterday and stepped out on the breezy balcony.

  He held the parchment aloft and then read: “By the hand of Don García Sarmiento y Sotomayor, Count of Salvatierra, sixteenth Viceroy of Perú. His most Gracious and Roman Catholic Majesty Felipe the Fourth sends greetings to his subjects in the city we are pleased to call our Villa Imperial of Potosí. Know ye that for some time we have had the wish and determination to settle many matters of disturbance to our city, by reason of its great importance to the service of God and the increase of our Holy Catholic faith and to the welfare of all our subjects, especially those resident there in the Villa Imperial. False coins, coins of alloy, yet stamped with the royal seal and minted in Potosí, are abroad in the world. This is an affront to the Royal Person of the King as well as a threat to the holy work of His Majesty in defending our Holy Faith. His Royal Majesty has therefore appointed Doctor Francisco de Nestares, President of the Charcas, as Visitador General, to exhaust all means which may appear conducive to find and prosecute the bandits with no respect for God or royal justice, to ensure the peace and tranquillity of the Villa Imperial, and to prevent interference with the King’s revenues.

  “Visitador Nestares will immediately begin to inform himself in minute detail what aspects of the silver industry are not being carried out in conformity with royal orders, and in all that he finds make correction, giving rules and instructions by which the mining and refining and minting of silver are in the future to be governed, to that end, without injury to the silver industry, the correction of all abuses which may have grown up in its management. The King has deemed it convenient to his royal service that Visitador Nestares shall arrive in Potosí no later than the Monday following Easter in the year of Our Lord 1650. I, the King.”

  The crowd stood in stunned silence for a few heartbeats and then erupted in a hundred exclamations. “Can it be true, then, that our money is false?” “It is what the Portuguese from Brazil have been saying.” “Oh, dear Lord, we will be ruined.” “So soon?” “Monday?” “That’s only four days from now.” “Why did we not have more warning?” “How can he arrive so soon?”

  Morada knew the answer to the last question. Though ordinarily they would know months or at least weeks in advance of the arrival of a royal Commissioner, this time they were given only four days’ warning. The Viceroy and the Crown hoped to catch the citizens of Potosí off guard.

  The Alcalde held up both his hands until he could again be heard. “To welcome the King’s emissary, we will have two weeks of celebration.” The city was world famous for the extravagance and beauty of its festivities—banquets, masked balls, bullfights, processions. Everyone in the plaza prayed they would be able to mount a welcome lavish enough to turn the head of Visitador Nestares. Or he would certainly ruin them.

  Morada grasped the hilt of his sword and, feigning a complete absence of emotion, strode inside.

  A HARQUEBUS SHOT’s distance away, in the corner of the square beyond the massive whitewashed granite hulk of the Mint, which more than the cathedral dominated the aspect of the city, Father Junipero Pimentel watched from in front of the rose-colored stone monastery where he lived—the Compañia de Jesus. The slight, tense Jesuit understood the exclamations of the crowd both in lilting, excited Spanish and in worried, staccato Aymara.

  They talked only of silver. They craved it like a drug. Even the Indians. This great city existed only because of the ore torn from the hellish mountain with the blood of God’s poorest creatures, brought to the mills across the canal where more forced laborers extracted the silver, which was then carried under guard here to the Mint. Behind these four-foot-thick walls, the silver was formed into ingots or stamped into irregular coins marked with the coat of arms of the King of Spain: reales, pieces of eight, the pirates called them.

  Llamas and mules carried one-fifth of the coins, the tribute due King Philip, over the Andes to the coast, where they were loaded onto galleons and shipped to Panama. Thence across the isthmus to the Ca rib be an, and on to Spain. That is, if English or Dutch pirates did not take the ships on their way.

  A hundred years ago, Indians and Spaniards both got rich from the mines. Some wealthy citizens of this city were descended from those first, fortunate Indians. But Spanish greed had triumphed. Now, armed soldiers walked the roof of the Mint to ensure that no silver went into the pockets of the workers, who more likely than not would die in the course of their labors. The conscripted, more like slaves than workers, walked under guard to Potosí in columns from villages hundreds of miles away, where their relatives played funeral marches for them as they left. Conventional wisdom said that without their forced labor—the mita, as the system of recruitment was called—Potosí would fall; and without Potosí, Perú would fall; and without Perú, Spain would fall; and without Spain, the Catholic Church would fall. Protestants would rule the world. A terrifying thought. Would God allow such a calamity? Or was this theory just a sanctimonious rationalization to support greed that wanted cheap labor?

  The people of Potosí were capable both of passionate devotion to the Holy Mother Church and of enormous greed. They competed in their devotion and especially in their extravagance. Don Jerónimo Andrade dressed himself and his bodyguard of eighteen in capes so laden with silver embroidery that they could barely walk. Don Juan Sarmiento once gave a party for three hundred that lasted the entire forty days from Easter until Ascension Thursday. Don Bartolomé Alameda trumped them all when he paid ten thousand pesos, the price of a hacienda in Spain, for a single fresh fig.

  They tolerated violence, mayhem, drunkenness, and debauchery. Every day, irritable young men fought duels over the most trivial points of honor. Murders and rapes were constant occurrences. Yet Potosinos had built some of the most beautiful churches in Christendom. They gave dowries to poor maidens. Some achieved a religious mysticism that in its most extreme seemed to the priest, God forgive him, indistinguishable from madness. Others gave alms with abandon. A beggar in the right place at the right time might receive ten thousand or even twenty thousand pesos. A white beggar, that is, with nothing to recommend h
im but his white face. Yet the city’s pillars of generosity paid their mita Indian workers only ten pesos a month, barely enough for food. From these meager wages they had to buy their own tools, even the candles they carried in the mine. Nothing was left to feed their families.

  A rock of disgust weighed in the priest’s stomach. Sins piled up like the slag beside the mine openings in this miserable and wonderful city.

  As the agitated crowd in the plaza dispersed, Pilar Tovar approached him. He whispered a prayer he knew would be in vain that she would not raise again her pleas for justice for that dead miner.

  He greeted her warmly and received her greetings. Just as she began making her demands, Mother Maria Santa Hilda and Sor Olga descended the steps of the cathedral and also approached. He interrupted Pilar’s words with a greeting to the sisters. Of the two difficult tasks these women asked of him, the Tovar woman’s was by far the more frustrating. He had made an effort to find out from the workers in the Corpus Christi lode any word about these mysterious documents that Santiago Yana had supposedly hidden in the mine, but the Indian’s fellow barreteros denied any knowledge. And since none of them was literate, it seemed impossible they could have understood what the papers, if they existed, could have meant. And where would he go with suspicions that Yana had been murdered? The powerful men in the city were not likely to redress the grievance of an Indian’s widow.

  He much preferred to leave off this subject and speak to the Abbess about Inez de la Morada. He stood by while the sisters and Pilar exchanged pleasantries and Doña Tovar withdrew.

  As Inez’s confessor, he was responsible for the well-being of her soul. Beyond that, he had great hopes for her. He saw in the spirited girl a powerful intelligence and an irresistible energy of character that were the makings of greatness. If he could mold these gifts, he might guide her toward a spirituality that one day might rival even Maria Santa Hilda’s. If this was ever to be so, Inez needed to remain—as she was now—removed from her father’s influence. No doubt Alcalde Morada loved his daughter, but he treated her too much like a son, involved her in worldly pursuits. If she was going to turn her considerable talents to godly interests, she must remain in the sphere of the holy women of Los Milagros.

  A few minutes ago, he had seen Alcalde Morada’s footman hand the Abbess a note. It must concern Inez. The padre was curious to know its contents.

  “What do you think of the proclamation?” the aristocratic Abbess asked immediately.

  “If the money is devalued, it will ruin this city. If Potosí’s coins are rejected, we are nothing but an imitation Spanish city in the most desolate spot on earth.” A sigh he would have preferred to suppress escaped him. “The poor will suffer far, far more than the rich.”

  The wizened Sor Olga gave a knowing grin. “You are always thinking of your Incas.”

  He forced a smile in response to hers. She was just an old woman. She did not mean to be unpleasant. She just enjoyed sparring with him. But it annoyed him that she called the Indians Incas and trivialized the distinctions among their tribes. And that she called them his, not only because he defended them, but because he was a Criollo—a person born on this side of the Atlantic. He did not bother to remind her that despite the location of his birth, he was not a Mestizo. His mother was not an Indian. Though she lived in Hispaniola, she was as Spanish as Sor Olga’s mother in Andalusia had been. It irked him that she ignored his pure Spanish blood, and it pained him that he was so proud of it.

  “The King himself has decreed that the Indians must not be enslaved. Yet we treat them no better than pack animals. Doña Tovar and I were just speaking about the death of one that will in all likelihood go unpunished, no matter how hard I try to help his widow.” The rock in his stomach pressed on his guts. He had again let her draw him into this same old argument.

  “You will try to get justice for him? My dear padre, you might as well try to get justice for a mule that dies at the treadmill in the Mint.” The old nun’s face glowed with the thrill of verbal battle.

  “The Indians are human. The Vatican established that over a hundred years ago,” he said with all priestly sanctimony. “There are those who believe that the natural state in which our countrymen found the Indians was life as God intended it to be.”

  She gave him a look of genuine shock. “Father! That they should live without the Holy Faith? If they are human, I am sure God did not intend that. Besides, you yourself have reminded me that there was a great civilization here: weavers, potters, builders of massive buildings. Not simple men living in nature.” The corners of her mouth curled again in that smug smile.

  He refused to acknowledge her triumph. She could best him in these little debates, but she was wrong in her heart. He would give her extra penance at her next confession. He forced away the thought as petty and sinful in itself. Pride and vengeance in one conversation. How did this holy old woman bring out the worst in him?

  He turned to the Abbess. “The proclamation the Alcalde read did not tell the whole story.”

  “What more is there?” The Abbess’s brown eyes showed more fear than curiosity. Hidden information always meant danger in the Byzantine world of the colonial government.

  He lowered his chin and whispered, “The Grand Inquisitor is coming, too. There will be an investigation into more than just the currency.” DaTriesta, the local Commissioner of the Inquisition, had bragged to him about it, though it was supposed to be a secret.

  Sor Olga folded her thin, reptilian hands in an attitude of prayer. “May God speed their holy work. What would be the point of controlling the purity of our coins if we did not also control the purity of souls?”

  The fear in the Abbess’s eyes turned to annoyance. “Reforms are sorely needed, but we are unlikely to get the ones we most desire.”

  He knew she referred to the Bishop and his money-grubbing practices. “Be very careful, Mother Abbess,” he said. “The Bishop feigns carelessness, but he is a formidable enemy. And you have something he wants.”

  “Inez.”

  “More than the return of the girl herself, I think he wants to be seen to have you in his command.”

  The Abbess’s eyes flitted sideways toward her companion and back to him. A warning not to be so open in Sor Olga’s presence. “He is the Bishop,” the Abbess said lightly. “He is infinitely more powerful than I.”

  The sisters went off then, toward the Bishop’s door, without telling the padre what Morada had written to the Abbess.

  MARIA SANTA HILDA entered the Bishop’s drawing room just as his Dutch clock chimed the quarter hour. She shuddered to find the local Commissioner of the Inquisition in the room. The combination of the proud and opulent Bishop and the pious and cruel DaTriesta boded no good for her. Apprehension stiffened her neck. She and Sor Olga crossed the room to kiss the Bishop’s ring. His fleshy fingers were warm. “Good morning, my lord.” In a city where the air was so thin as to be hardly breathable, the atmosphere in this sitting room was oppressively heavy.

  “God be with you, my daughters,” the Bishop said. “Please forgive me if I come right to the point. I have to be in the cathedral in a few moments to say the Holy Thursday Mass. I am afraid I must order you, in no uncertain terms, to return Inez de la Morada to her father.”

  Maria Santa Hilda suppressed a smile and reached into her pocket for the Alcalde’s note. “My lord, I have—”

  “His Lordship here has told me that you harbor some strange ideas about protecting young women from their duty to their fathers,” Commissioner DaTriesta interrupted her.

  Fear, like the footfalls of a spider, crept across the Abbess’s shoulders. DaTriesta was sniffing for heresy. She bristled at the threat. Showing him the note would stop him, but she was tempted to let him stumble into a losing fight. She withdrew her hand from her pocket. “We live in a licentious and quarrelsome city, Father Commissioner,” she said with forced humility. “My sisters and I devote our lives to prayer that we may be a wellspring of grace to se
rve God’s people.”

  “Is it true, as I have heard,” DaTriesta said, “that you harbor opinions about women that are very liberal—almost Protestant?”

  The Abbess looked to the Bishop for some defense. He suppressed a belch and turned to the Commissioner. “Come now. The Lady Abbess . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he could offer nothing but her nobility to credit her.

  “I think the Lady Abbess should answer my question,” DaTriesta said, and licked his thick, dry lower lip.

  Sor Olga’s face worked. She looked as if her tongue were scraping something off the roof of her mouth. Her eyes gloated that her repeated warnings to the Abbess had come to pass.

  An excess of temper forced the truth from the Abbess. “I merely reminded His Grace that it often falls to convents to take problem women off the hands of the wealthy.” She refrained from saying such as poor wretched girls who had lost their virginity and were no longer marriageable. The insane. The deformed. The merely ugly. Women considered useless because they would make no nobleman a desirable wife.

  “Be careful of pride, my daughter,” DaTriesta said.

  “May I respectfully remind you, Father, that I am answerable only to the head of my order in Madrid.” She looked to the Bishop, but his small, round eyes deferred to DaTriesta.

  The Commissioner held back his haughty head. “If you are thinking of appealing to your Mother House, remember it will take six months for your letter to cross the ocean and a reply to return. Much can transpire in such a time.”

  She met DaTriesta’s gaze and struggled to hide her disdain.

  “Shall I tell Captain de la Morada that he may come and get his daughter?” the Bishop asked.

  She withdrew the paper from her pocket. “In fact, my lord, he writes me that he has relinquished her to the convent. He begs only that I keep her safe and to pray for both of them.”

  The Bishop took the paper and read. His mouth opened and closed in shock. He fell silent.